Patrick Giblin was like America’s version of “Tinder Swindler,” but without the private jets.
He courted women with stories about his respectable family (his father was a judge, he said) and a waterfront property in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he said he worked in the casino industry, according to a federal criminal complaint. He told them that he was ready to settle down and that he was more interested in a woman’s inner beauty than her outer appearance.
He swore that distance was not an issue because he had access to discounted flights and was even ready to move to a woman’s town to further their romance.
But federal officials say those were all lies, concocted to defraud women looking for love through dating sites. A review of plea agreements and federal complaints shows that Giblin defrauded at least 100 women over two decades, out of more than $250,000 with false promises followed by applications for short-term loans that were never repaid.
“He took advantage of vulnerabilities, vowing to end the loneliness of a woman who had recently ended a long-term relationship or calming someone who recently suffered the death of a loved one,” said a report from federal prosecutors in New Jersey. “Giblin would convince these women that he was willing to move into her place, but he needed money to do it.”
Despite convictions and prison time, he continued to defraud women, even after he was caught and twice escaped federal custody.
Prosecutors say Giblin even conned women from prison while serving time on similar charges, and after he became a fugitive by failing to report to a rehab center in Newark, New Jersey.
But their schemes may finally be over. On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced Giblin to 66 months in prison for escaping federal custody and one count of wire fraud for participating in a scheme to defraud women through telephone dating services.
Its cons predate Tinder and other dating apps.
Giblin’s scams date back to the early 2000s, authorities said, when she was in her late 30s and long before Tinder, Bumble and other dating apps. She is now 58.
On Lavalife, QuestChat and other dating services, Giblin called himself “Pat,” an apparently charismatic man who assured women that their weight, height and other physical characteristics were not an issue, according to the federal criminal complaint. The complaint says he created numerous accounts in his name on dating sites in the United States and Canada.
Prosecutors say he would message women on the sites, tell them he was looking for a long-term relationship with a “real, true, genuine woman” and exchange phone numbers.
Giblin would then establish a relationship with the women through lengthy phone conversations before beginning to ask them for money, according to court documents. She gave them various excuses for financial emergencies, including that her car broke down or that she needed funds to release the winnings of a gambling tournament, according to court documents.
His scams predated Venmo, Zelle and other payment apps, so he asked women to send him cash, usually several hundred dollars at a time, via MoneyGram or Western Union. Some of the women did not know how to use the cable services, but he would guide them through the process, according to federal court documents.
Prosecutors say Giblin targeted vulnerable women, including widows, women with physical disabilities and single mothers, including at least one who had recently lost a child.
“Giblin went after the lonely and heartbroken. He discovered their weaknesses and attacked them when he didn’t get their money,” Kathy Waters, executive director of Advocating Against Romance Scammers, told CNN. “Victims are not only financially abused, but also emotionally and psychologically. He is a master manipulator who has scammed an unknown number of people, as some never show up.”
Giblin’s public defender, Lori Koch, declined to comment when contacted by CNN.
He was first arrested in 2005 for defrauding a woman in Ohio.
Giblin’s scams were first exposed after he was indicted on an extortion charge in New Jersey for allegedly defrauding a woman in Ohio. That was in March 2005.
After his arrest, the FBI said he had used the same phone dating services to scam women across the country for five years before that, court documents show.
At the time, Giblin admitted that over a five-year period he had victimized more than 80 women, according to a federal report. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 115 months in prison.
But that was just the beginning.
Waters believes his victim toll is likely much higher because Giblin continued to defraud women on and off until 2021, and some victims of romance scammers are too embarrassed to come forward.
“The number of romance scam victims Giblin has raped in the US over the years is a number we’ve never seen linked to a scammer,” Waters said. “Failing to report crime is common for those who have been romance scammed. Often scrutiny goes along with reporting, leading to embarrassment and embarrassment.”
To avoid confusing the women, Giblin kept detailed notes of their dating service activity, including the names of the victims, their physical descriptions, what they did and the type of man they were seeking, according to the criminal. complain. The FBI interviewed numerous women who revealed that they had sent him money.
As part of a plea deal, Giblin admitted to stealing more than $200,000 from women over the years. In April 2007, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to more than nine years in prison.
He was sent to a federal prison in Greenville, Illinois. But his criminal activity did not stop.
He escaped from federal custody in 2012.
In late 2012, federal officials placed Giblin in a residential reentry program in Philadelphia. There, he was given a day pass to find work in Atlantic City, but he never returned and became a fugitive., according to the criminal complaint.
A few weeks later, federal authorities found him in an Atlantic City hotel, gambling funds from women he had defrauded into phone dating services while on the run, according to court documents. He had checked into the hotel under an alias, “Michael Patrick.”
A federal agent asked Giblin where he got the $711 he had and if he had received any money from women, and he replied: “There’s a girl I’ve been fucking with.”
But a search of his hotel room revealed that there was more than one woman.
Investigators recovered a cell phone, money transfer receipts and notebooks containing a trove of information, including physical descriptions, interests and hobbies of women he interacted with on dating sites while on the run. The women came from all over the country, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, New York and Ohio.
In his notes on a woman, Giblin wrote, “she has a savings account. House is paid for, she’s not a gold digger,” the federal documents say. He pleaded guilty to the evasion charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In December 2013, he was released from prison again, this time to begin supervised release in New Jersey, according to federal documents. As a condition of his release, Giblin was required to notify his probation officer of any plans to leave the state, but a federal agent later arrested him at a hotel in Colonie, New York.
While in New York, Giblin used dating sites to meet and defraud more than 10 women of between $15,000 and $40,000, according to court documents.
Eight years later, he escaped again
Giblin was convicted and sentenced in August 2017 to five years in prison and ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in restitution. He continued to scam women while incarcerated in federal prisons in Estill, South Carolina, and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, according to court records.
In July 2020, his transfer from Lewisburg prison to a residential reentry center in Newark was approved. Federal officials say he was escorted to a plane in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Giblin’s itinerary included a stopover in Charlotte. He never showed up in Newark.
He was arrested in March 2021 in Atlantic City and pleaded guilty in July of this year to wire fraud and escape from federal custody. In addition to his sentence this week to 66 months in prison, Giblin was given three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $23,428.
Waters, the advocate for victims of romance scams, said she doesn’t think the sentence was harsh enough considering the breadth of Giblin’s crimes, and it only gives him time to plan more ways to scam women.
“Unfortunately, the counts did not include all the lives that were harmed,” he told CNN. “It takes years to heal emotionally, psychologically and financially from these scammers.”
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery company. All rights reserved.
Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm registration on the list.
Mistake! There was an error processing your request.